Thesis (B.Psy.Sc.(Hons.)) - University of Queensland, 2006. / Includes bibliography.

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The present study investigated the influence of encoding context on the types of recognition errors that adults and nine-year-olds commit . Encoding context was varied through the use of different orienting questions. In general, it was found that both nine-year-olds and adults were influenced by encoding context. Nine-year-olds, however, committed more contextually related false recognition errors only when they both answered orienting questions and generated related words, while adults were influenced by context only after answering orienting questions. When adults were asked to generate words in addition to answering questions, the encoding context effect disappeared. Two hypotheses were proposed to explain these results. The first suggested that children failed to process stimuli as elaborately as adults, and were thus less likely to incorrectly recognize more contextually related foils, unless they were explicitly required to generate related words (often foils) . The second hypothesis suggested that the retrieval strategies of adults and children differed. Children probably picked words on the test based on familiarity, and unless they generated foils, the context effect would not be expected to appear. Adults, however, may have employed more sophisticated test-taking strategies. After iv simply answering orienting questions, they may have selected some foils based on the context of remembered orienting questions. However, after generating related words, some subjects may have avoided choosing those words (usually foils) on the recognition memory test, resulting in the disappearance of the context effect

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Five experiments, involving 265 subjects, were performed with the objective of extending the analysis of response probability as a determinant of the practice effect in tachistoscopic word recognition. The results showed that the response probabilities of words may be manipulated and act as a determinant of the practice effect under certain limited experimental conditions. A more powerful determinant appears to be a general skill in tachistoscopic recognition which improves as a function of the number of stimuli recognized and transfers to the recognition of different stimuli. This skill was examined in the final experiment. The overall results were discussed in terms of both response probability and a general tachistoscopic skill. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

published_or_final_version / abstract / Psychology / Master / Master of Philosophy

The primary claim of this dissertation is that children and adults process language in the same manner, meaning that when children are acquiring their first language what they are truly doing is perfecting their language processing abilities. Language acquisition and processing both start from the same place. Both work to find patterns in the signal that will, eventually, be paired with meaning. This dissertation argues that differences in how children and adults accomplish these tasks are one of degree and not kind. To show this, three experiments tested how adults and children responded to a conflict between the lexical and prosodic parse of an utterance. The participants’ response to this conflict reveals information about where they are in the language acquisition process. In these experiments, prosody was used to disambiguate phrases that can be interpreted either as a list of two items (e.g., fruit, salad) or as a single compound item (e.g., fruit-salad). Prosody was also made to conflict with the lexical parse of an utterance. When the word cactus is said with List Prosody two non-words /kæk/ and /tʌs/ result. When the words nail and key are said with Compound Prosody, the non-word nailkey is created. By exploiting the overlap between the prosodic system and the lexical system, it is possible to evaluate how language is being processed. The results show that adults tend to parse utterances based on the lexical content, and ignore ambiguities created by a conflict between the prosodic and the lexical interpretation of the phrase. In contrast, children tend to respond based on the prosody, making increasing use of the lexical content as they mature. When the same items are tested with abstract shapes rather than representational images, adults make greater use of prosody. This suggests that visual input plays a role in spoken word processing. The dissertation also proposes a modified model of spoken word recognition that accounts for the difference seen between the adults and the children, and for the effect of visual content. This model integrates phonetic details, prosodic content, lexical knowledge, visual content, and pragmatic understanding during spoken word recognition.